Orlando 40th Birthday Trip 2025 - PART 6
Staying at Universal, visiting Orlando's Theme Parks,
relaxing in the Water Parks and animal sightseeing!
Disney's Hollywood Studios
For a taste of showbiz and razzmatazz, look no further than Hollywood Studios, with its vibrant atmosphere of show tunes blaring out, and it greatly appealed to me as a big theatre fan.
There are street to emulate Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards and you feel like you are walking through the real locations and a sense of importance and status, and in a carefree mood. There is great attention to detail with this park, down to the plaques on the pavement for the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
An early highlight of the day was experiencing the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, which was like a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into setting up a stunt, complete with the casting directors, stunt coordinators and Harrison Ford body double involved in the film! They would leap off high areas of the evolving set, choreograph fight sequences, we had the iconic boulder-evading scene, for the denouement, they set up a plane to be blown up with the body double leaping off just in time (no spoilers with the video, you will have to go to see this part!) It was extraordinary to witness and no CGI in sight here!
The park have also achieved masterful things in the Star War’s Galaxy’s edge area, with extensive rockwork, spaceships and planes dominating this mysterious land, and their showpiece ride, Rise of the Resistance, is a very slick production, featuring the stormtroopers and other enemies, whizzing round a spaceship design for an unpredictable and thrilling adventure. It is probably the most technically advanced ride I’ve seen, with spectacular coordinated effects.
A ride I had seen a few clips about was the Hollywood Tower of Terror, taking place in a dingy, abandoned hotel, once purportedly housing the rich and famous, but now haunted with a malfunctional elevator. The build-up to the terrifying experience is fantastic, as you go through the creepy surroundings and lobby of the hotel before entering the lift. Essentially, this is a drop (and launch) tower in the dark, but the theming is everything. When the doors whip open at the top, and you realise how high you are, it is quite scary, as it builds up that mindset. I’m not usually a fan of horror rides, but this was an absolute masterpiece.
Other highlights included Toy Story Land with a great family coaster, and also a classic Mickey Mouse Miniature Railway ride, where the theming smashes you through watching a cartoon to being part of the action very neatly, and it has a catchy tune to it.
There’s also time to take stock of the phenomenon of Disney with a mini multimedia museum timelining the key dates in its history, and you can watch an extremely emotional film from Walt Disney himself of his influences and inspirations.
He remarked that there was enough land in Florida (and also pretty flat) to provide all the entertainment people would want with his plans, and it’s interesting thinking how unequivocally it now defines Orlando. It was a fascinating journey back in time, and overall I loved the theatrical escapism of this day.
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